Deisy Penton de Cabrera, 56, was charged with absentee-ballot fraud, a third-degree felony, and two misdemeanor counts of violating a county ordinance that makes it illegal for anyone to possess more than two ballots belonging to other voters. Investigators suspect Cabrera, a ballot broker known in Spanish as a boletera, of illegally collecting at least 31 absentee ballots.

Police detectives followed Cabrera over two days last week. On July 24, according to an arrest affidavit unsealed Thursday, she dropped off 19 absentee ballots at a Hialeah post office.

The next day, detectives followed Cabrera into a nursing home, where she went into the room of a woman identified by police as Z.G. The officers overheard Cabrera telling Z.G. that she was sent there by the woman’s sister to get her signature. A few minutes later, Cabrera left.

When the detectives went into the room to speak to Z.G., they found she was unresponsive. The detective said hello and waved to Z.G., whose eyes were open, the warrant says, “but she [stared] off into space and did not respond to the greeting.”

Cabrera then visited five more assistant-living facilities before police stopped her and found 12 absentee ballots in her possession. They also detained and questioned Matilde M. Rendueles, the woman driving Cabrera around in a red Toyota Corolla. (Rendueles had earlier been identified in reports as Matilde Martinez.)

Detectives visited the unresponsive woman at the nursing home two more times, according to the warrant. They also interviewed Z.G.’s sisters, one of whom said the woman is terminally ill and “cannot write, comprehend or communicate.”

This broker surely is not the only one trolling America’s assisted living facilities, casting votes on behalf of defenseless people who cannot stop them. A slew of these ballot brokers were busted in the Texas Rio Grande Valley a few years back. Those cases played a big role in the drive to enact voter photo ID. Those cases had nothing to do with assisted living facilities, though, the brokers were working on behalf of Democrat machine candidates in the area and making sure that they had enough ballots on hand to win their primary elections.

Pursuing and prosecuting these criminals, unfortunately, often depends on having local elected officials who believe in protecting the integrity of elections. And one party, the Democrats, have publicly declared that protecting election integrity is the last thing they want to do.